Virtuozzo Containers is a truly great Os virtualization solution. It is proprietary software of Parallels and its software development principles are based on OpenVZ.

Unlike OpenVZ, Virtuozzo offers OS virtualization solution both for Windows and Linux OS. It creates isolated containers on a physical server and OS instance. The producer, Parallels says that compared to other virtualization technologies Virtuozzo offers "the highest levels of density, performance and manageability".

Virtuozzo Containers is compatible with x86, x86-64 and IA-64 platforms.

We said that Virtuozzo is based on OpenVZ. On of the advantage of the software architecture of Virtuozzo Containers is that it allows its users to share hardware and software licenses among different workloads.

We can say that Virtuozzo is probably the best choice for virtualization solution that any web hosting provider can choose. One of the main reasons for this is that it saves hardware and software resources by optimizes their usage. This allows web hosts to support hundreds of containers on a single server. Of course this does not mean that Virtuozzo should be used to corrupt the principles of VPS Hosting the way overselling hosts do in Shared Hosting.

Virtuozzo supports servers with up to 64 CPUs and 64 GB of RAM.

When a Virtuozzo user wants to use it under Windows Operating system as server OS, then all the Virtual Private Servers must also run the same version of Windows OS.

Linux users are offered more flexibility, because each VPS can run a Linux distribution different from the one of the host machine.

Virtualization method of Virtuozzo

Virtuozzo is a quite unique virtualizaton method because it virtualizes at the OS level, instead of at the hardware level. While other Virtual Machines (VMs) virtualize "a complete set of hardware", Virtuozzo virtualizes "an OS instance". So all Virtual servers created by Virtuozzo run atop a single OS kernel. The mechanisms of VPS creation multiplexes the OS kernel to look like multiple server (OS) instances.

The method of Virtuozzo causes lower overhead on the physical server than other virtual machine technologies, do. It relies on a single kernel and the VPS run the same kernel. All other applications - system libraries, configuration files, program files are different for can be different for each virtual server.

Virtuozzo saves providers resources and ensures fast-performance for VPS owners.

The virtualization technologies are old enough in computer science and there were virtual server technologies as well as VPS hosting solutions on the market for more than a decade. But the consumer interest over Virtual Servers begun only 3 years ago in 2005.

The data, VPS Host Dir obtained from Google and other public sources, shows that the firs major increase of consumer interest on "VPS Hosting" search term dates back to the 3rd quarter of 2005. The stable trend that shows increasing consumer interest on vps hosting services started in the beginning of 2006.

The interest on search term "virtualization" has also begun increasing in the second quarter of 2004. Up to date it has an average monthly search volume of 201,000 searches. October 2008 data shows 245,000.

The average searches of "VPS Hosting" are 18,000 per month.